Viewing page 58 of 96

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

                                     - 58 -

they might be killed in the fighting. I remember some of the songs, "And we won't come back 'til it's over over there." The newspapers urged everyone to observe meat-less, wheat-less and sugar-less days to buy Liberty Bonds. They said we were fighting to "make the world safe for Democracy." But in my small sphere it was vastly more important that I had been elected President of my class in the second year. On the day of graduation, flower maidens clad in flowing white Grecian robes escorted me to a throne in the quadrangle. Such goings on! Europe was a world away from that quiet corner of San Jose Normal School, no bombs or shells would explode on American soil, and like most Americans I was sure in my mind about what it wall meant, and would mean, to me. I fear we shall never see such cloudless skies again. 

    To digress for a moment, my husband once asked me it I remembered Armistice Day and the end of the war. "Oh, yes," I said. "I was in the orchard picking prunes when the bells began ringing and the sirens went off." He happened to mention this to my brother, Bill, who snorted, acidly, "You